


an old battered knapsack

by untiltheveryend



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Running away from home
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-02
Updated: 2018-05-02
Packaged: 2019-05-01 02:42:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,004
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14510763
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/untiltheveryend/pseuds/untiltheveryend
Summary: When Ginny was seven years old, she ran away from home. She was seven years old and she wanted more than anything in the world to stop being the youngest and the smallest and the baby.





	an old battered knapsack

**Author's Note:**

> this was written years ago, and for some reason I just never posted it. so here it is today, just a little drabble about the Ginny in my head - the one who takes names not shit and who has every right to be pissed at the world. the Ginny who is somehow filled with hope and joy regardless. 
> 
> enjoy. x

When Ginny was seven years old, she ran away from home. She was seven years old and she wanted more than anything in the world to stop being the youngest and the smallest and the baby. Running away, she figured, was a pretty good way to become the oldest and the biggest and the most grown up. If she ran away, there wouldn’t be anyone to tell her what to do. 

Ginny had six older brothers and seven years of roaming the fields around Ottery St Catchpole like a wild thing. She packed an old knapsack with her third favourite blanket, a corned beef sandwich that had been meant for Ron’s lunch and her teddy bear. She slipped through a hole in the hedge, although nobody would have asked her where she was going even if she walked down the drive. It was never too early to be careful of getting caught. 

She walked and walked, bare feet on hot summer earth. She wished she’d thought of bringing something to drink, and she saved her sandwich for later. 

When the sun set, she curled up in her blanket and counted the stars. 

Arthur found her the next morning, feeding corned-beef-sandwich-crumbs to a friendly woodpecker. Her hair was full of dust and she was smiling. 

Molly didn’t let her out of sight for the rest of the summer, but it had been worth it just for one night under the stars. Just for one night without anyone telling her to go to bed or brush her teeth. She hadn’t even taken her teddy bear out of her bag.

-

Ginny couldn’t wait to go to Hogwarts. She imagined it would feel like freedom, like sleeping rolled up in a rough woolen blanket under a ceiling of constellations. 

She didn’t think about the rules, about the way she would sleep crowded up with four other girls, none of whom she found interesting. At least at home, she had her own bedroom. 

She didn’t think about the way that stone walls and elderly professors can have weightier expectations than any parent or older brother. 

Ginny never forgave Hogwarts for not being the thing she wanted it to be. 

Ginny never forgave herself for being the girl that Tom Riddle turned inside out. 

-

When Ginny was fourteen, she started kissing boys. 

When Ginny was fifteen, she kissed Harry Potter. She smiled, and laughed and never ever let him know quite who she was. Ginny didn’t think she knew how to be the girl that everyone seemed to think she already was. 

When Ginny was sixteen years old she looked a murderess in the eyes and spat at her. She curled her fingers into the robes of first years and whispered for them to run. She fought a war, lead an army. 

She was told, in no uncertain terms, that she had to stay behind.

Ginny never forgave Harry for thinking she would do anything but fight.

When Ginny was sixteen years old, her brother died. She went to both funerals - the big one for everyone who died in the Battle, and the little one that was just family and closest friends. She stood next to her Mother and watched everyone cry and cry and cry. She hugged Harry, but when he tried to hold her hand, she didn’t let him. 

She stared at a spot just over his left shoulder and told him that she needed some time. She didn’t stand there long enough to hear the end of whatever platitude he was stumbling through. 

She apparated home instead, and thought grimly about how nice it would be if they sent someone to tell her how illegal that was. She hadn’t punched anyone in days.

They didn’t send anyone, of course they didn’t. Ginny was a war hero now.

Or was she a child? A bride, or a tear stained girlfriend? A prize. 

She stole Fred’s broom from the shed and ripped ladders in her brand new stockings when she mounted it. 

When Ginny was twelve years old, she had flown on a broomstick for the first time. The taste of the wind on her tongue had filled her up until she was bursting. She had wanted to never come down. 

There is only so much freedom to be found in the sky, especially if you are alone up there.

They called her down eventually, Molly tutting over the runs in her stockings and everyone else reminding her how unsafe it was to fly by herself. How, really, anything could have happened. 

Ginny stomped to her room and tried to pretend that she wasn’t drowning in their voices, struggling to stay afloat with the weight of their worry and fear dragging her down. 

-

When Ginny was sixteen years old, she ran away from home. 

She dragged out that same old battered knapsack, and fiddled around with a wand and a book she nicked from Hermione until there was a little more to it than met the eye. She packed clothes and money and several leftover prank shop items. She scrounged around in the bathroom until she had enough soap and sunblock potion. She piled her long red hair on top of her head and stuck her wand through it the way Luna did sometimes. 

And then she sat and tucked all the other things in. Letters and pictures and keepsakes. A pressed flower Neville gave her on her fourteenth birthday and the teddy bear she took with her that first time that she ran away, all those years ago. 

In the morning, she was gone.

Just a letter on the kitchen table, next to a cup of tea brewed just the way her mum liked, still steaming from the heat of Ginny’s best warming charm. 

When Ginny was sixteen years old, she walked out the front door of the place she called home, and ambled down the long drive. She stopped to smell the wildflowers that grew like crazy everywhere that Molly didn’t want them. 

She didn’t look back.


End file.
